University of Melbourne students have successfully tested a 3D-printed rocket engine with support from CSIRO’s Lab 22, marking what CSIRO says is a first for an Australian student team at the international Race2Space competition.
The engine, known as “Slinky”, was developed as part of a University of Melbourne Aerospace and Rocket Engineering Society (ARES) capstone project. CSIRO said Lab 22 collaborated with a three-member team to design and manufacture a regeneratively cooled liquid bipropellant rocket engine, a design that circulates one propellant through channels in the combustion chamber wall to cool the engine before combustion.
Senior research scientist and team leader at CSIRO, Dr Cherry Chen, said 3D printing enabled cooling channels to be built inside the combustion chamber wall, replacing more complex external pipe and tube systems traditionally used for cooling.
CSIRO said the students—Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering masters students Jack Gardiner, Brooke Doolan and Stuart Davis—worked with Lab 22 scientists and engineers to develop an integrated engine featuring embedded micro cooling channels for regenerative cooling.
Dr Chen said Lab 22 provided guidance on material selection, mechanical behaviour, design for additive manufacturing, and post-treatment of 3D-printed parts. She said the engine was produced at Clayton, Victoria using Lab 22’s Nikon SLM Solutions 280 2MA laser powder bed fusion system in a copper alloy selected for thermal conductivity and suitability for high heat environments.
CSIRO said the team transported the approximately 6kg engine to the United Kingdom for Race2Space, where it achieved five stable hot-fire tests in a single day, including throttling runs. Team member Stuart Davis said the engine reached a maximum thrust of 5.4 kilonewtons and won the LOX bipropellant category. He said the engine was mounted on a welded steel thrust structure designed to interface with Airborne Engineering’s test facilities.
“We’re absolutely thrilled to be at the cutting edge of computational engineering and demonstrating the results that its integration can achieve,” Davis said.
CSIRO said the result represents the first time a regeneratively cooled liquid rocket engine has been successfully fired by an Australian student team at Race2Space.
University of Melbourne Chair and Professor of Computational Mechanics Professor Richard Sandberg, who supervised the capstone project, said the test campaign showed what could be achieved by combining computer-assisted design and additive manufacturing with student engineering. “This rapid concept-to-test approach will speed up development cycles in engineering, helping to innovate and bring down cost,” he said.
Ms Doolan said the success was “a big step forward for ARES Rocketry” and could support future integration of the engine into a rocket developed at the university.